and according to the reasonably well-proven theories of space-crew psychology, she would have to replace my wife and I her husband. It was supposed to be easy, since we wouldn't have been in the same crew if we weren't known to be more compatible than ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of the world's married couples.

I pictured her in my mind and tried to superimpose "wife" on the image. It didn't work. I gave it up. Maybe later; it had all happened so fast....

Four days ago, the eight ships of Joint Martian Expedition One had gone into orbit around Mars.

Four men and four women in each ship; forty of the most stable marriages discoverable at the present state of the research which had resulted in using the "stabilizing influence" of marriage to stabilize space crews.

Three of those ships were equipped with the streamlined nose-shells and wings necessary to make actual landings on Mars. Number One, my ship, was supposed to make the first landing, on skis, near the edge of the north polar cap. We carried a pair of double-unit sand-tractors, each of which had quarters for four in the front section and carried a featherweight bulldozer on the trailer.

We were supposed to report a safe landing by radio, proceed overland to the equator, and carve out a landing strip, in seventy days. If the radio didn't work, we were to touch off the remaining fuel in our tanks, after we had everything clear of the blast area.

Right now, a mile or so behind us, the drives and fuel tanks of Number One were sending merging columns of smoke high into the thin Martian air. A magnificent signal.

Only we hadn't touched them off.

And they couldn't have ignited on contact and still be going like that. They couldn't have gone much before Helene and I came to, about seven hours after we hit.

About half a mile in front of us one of the bulldozers lay on its side, a short distance from the wreck of the nose section, slashed open where the tractor had come through it diagonally, missing Helene and myself by inches. The 'dozer, the wingtips, and the tractor unit, which we had climbed into, were the only things left remotely intact.

It was a real, genuine, gold-plated miracle.

I didn't know how it had happened, or why. It occurred at the first shock of landing, and that was 

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